Edward O. Wilson - Anthill

ANTHILL

ALSO BY EDWARD O. WILSON

The Theory of Island Biogeography , with Robert H. MacArthur (1967)

A Primer of Population Biology, with William H. Bossert (1971)

The Insect Societies (1971)

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975)

On Human Nature (1978)

Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects, with George F. Oster (1978)

Genes, Mind, and Culture , with Charles J. Lumsden (1981)

Promethean Fire , with Charles J. Lumsden (1983)

Biophilia (1984)

The Ants , with Bert Holldobler (1990)

Success and Dominance in Ecosystems: The Case of the Social Insects (1990)

The Diversity of Life (1992)

Journey to the Ants , with Bert Holldobler (1994)

Naturalist (1994)

In Search of Nature (1996)

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

Biological Diversity: The Oldest Human Heritage (1999)

The Future of Life (2002)

Pheidole in the New World (2003)

From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin (2005)

Nature Revealed: Selected Writings, 1949-2006 (2006)

The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (2006)

The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies , with Bert Holldobler (2009)

The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct , with Bert Holldobler (2010)

ANTHILL

A Novel

E. O. WILSON

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

New York * London

Copyright (c) 2010 by Edward O. Wilson

All rights reserved

"Nokobee County, Alabama" map by David Cain

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson, Edward O.
Anthill: a novel / E.O. Wilson.--1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-393-06320-2
Teenage boys--Fiction. 2. Naturalists--Fiction.
3. Nature conservation--Fiction. 4. Ants--Fiction.
5. Alabama--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.I5788A57 2010
813'.6--dc22

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

For M. C. Davis and Sam Shine,
benefactors of America's natural heritage,
from tall tree to humble ant.

ANTHILL

Contents

PROLOGUE

THIS IS A STORY about three parallel worlds, which nevertheless exist in the same space and time. They rise together, they fall, they rise again, but in cycles so different in magnitude that each is virtually invisible to the others.

The smallest are the ants, who build civilizations in the dirt. Their histories are epics that unfold on picnic grounds. Their colonies, like those of humans, are in perpetual conflict. War is a genetic imperative of most. The colonies grow and struggle and sometimes they triumph over their neighbors. Then they die, always.

Human societies are the second world. There are of course vast differences between ants and men. But in fundamental ways their cycles are similar. There is something genetic about this convergence. Because of it, ants are a metaphor for us, and we for them. Homer might have written equally of ants and men, Zeus has given us the fate of winding down our lives in painful wars, from youth until we perish, each of us .

Thousands of times greater in space and time is the third of our worlds, the biosphere, the totality of all life, plastered like a membrane over all of earth. The biosphere has its own epic cycles. Humanity, one of the countless species forming the biosphere, can perturb it, but we cannot leave it or destroy it without perishing ourselves. The cycles of the other species can be destroyed, and the biosphere corrupted. But for each careless step we take, our species will ultimately pay an unwelcome price--always.

FROGMAN

T WO WEEKS BEFORE Labor Day, Raphael Semmes Cody sat with his cousin Junior in Roxie's Ice Cream Palace. Both were scooping out almond crunch ice cream covered with butterscotch syrup and sprinkled with chopped walnuts. Outside, heavy air grown humid from passage over the Gulf of Mexico and torrid from radiant heat off the Florida Panhandle had come to rest upon the little town of Clayville. The Alabama sky, mercilessly clear, offered no promise of an afternoon shower. Customers entering the Palace plucked at shirts and blouses stuck with sweat to their bodies.

"My Lord, it is hot out there," said a linen-clad businessman with a sigh as he pushed through the door.

A farmer sitting on a stool laughed. "Yeah, hotter'n a bucket of red ants."

Junior didn't care. He said to Raphael, "I got a great idea. Let's go see if we can find the Chicobee Serpent." He meant Alabama's equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. Over the past century, hundreds of local people claimed to have seen something very big, snakelike, and definitely mysterious lurking in the deeper water of the nearby Chicobee River.

"Naw, that's crazy," Raff--as he was usually called--replied. "That's just a story people made up. There isn't any such thing as a Chicobee Serpent."

Junior had anticipated that response. "Yeah, there is. Lots of people have seen it. You just gotta drift down the river real quiet-like, don't use no outboard motor or anythin'. Make your boat look like a floatin' log, or somethin' like that, you know."

"Oh, yeah, if a lot of people have seen it," Raff said, "why haven't they taken any pictures?"

"Maybe they didn't have any cameras with them. They were just out fishin'. I tell you what, we'll take a camera. I got one. If we take a picture, you bet we'll be famous."

"What's it supposed to look like?" Raff asked.

"It's a lot like a real big snake. It curls around a lot. Nobody's seen the head, just parts of the body."

Raff shook his head. "I don't think so. My parents--"

"Oh, come on, don't be chicken." Junior flapped his arms and made clucking noises. "What we got to lose? It'd be a lot of fun. We'll stop along the way and visit Frogman. Maybe he'll show us Old Ben. Wouldn't you like to see the biggest alligator in the world?"

Raff shook his head again, this time harder. "Now I know you're crazy. Frogman'll kill us if we go on his property. They say he murdered some people up in Lownes County and got away with it. I hear if you get too close to his landing, even when you're just fishing around there, he'll come out and yell and tell you he's going to kill you."

"Aw, come on," Junior replied. "Old Frogman makes a lot of noise, but he wouldn't hurt a fly. It'd be real interestin' if we could visit him. Somethin' to tell people about. Maybe he'll let us take a picture of Old Ben. It would really be somethin' to show that around."

"Oh, yeah? I hear people disappear on the Chicobee and their bodies are never found."

"You think Frogman did that? No way. If they suspected him even just a smidgen, he'd be down at the Clayville Police Station and they'd be diggin' up his property to look for dead bodies."